What Technology should i Use for this

[phillyman2004]

Here is the website idea

An Emulation site dedicated to old videogames .....such as Super Mario Brothers

The user should be able to browse thru videogame collections that are sorted out by system and then alphabetically/ or by genre

Each game will have a webpage dedicated to it where the user can do the following

1) See ScreenShots of the videogame

2) See any Cheats\Passwords

3) See what emulators the games run on

4) A review system where users can rate a game from 1-10

5) The ability to Leave comments about the game

6) The ability to download save files for the game

7) See simular games that the user might enjoy

8) The ability to link to Ebay (Affiliate) , so that they can bid on the old game they are viewing

I just dont want to start designing the website one way ....then change my mind and have to redo over 1000+ pages

What web technologies would best help me out with this project......that way i can buy a book on it and read

[Scubar]

im no webmaster but seeing as nobody else has posted yet ive decided to post. for what you want todo you should ideally learn these things :

Html ( obvious )

Css ( help make the site look all fancy ).

MySql ( database )

PHP ( scripting language for accessing the database and to allow users to post comments on ur site )

if i am wrong then im sure one of the proper webmasters will say so.

[Rhelic]

I'm a pro web designer & web programmer and a video game historian & retro fan...

My recommendation is to do use MobyGames.com! If your seriously want to spend all the time to make a site to honor these games, then instead of trying to re-invent the wheel go make current sites better by adding your own reviews.

I've dealt with dozens of people asking the same question as you, just with different content. Here's the cold hard truth:

#1 In 6 months you're interest level will fall

#2 You're unlikely to continue to pay for hosting after your year runs out

#3 Whatever work was done on your site by users goes down the drain when it could have been spent on a permanent site.

At this point you think I'm wrong, you'll dedicate 20hrs/week on this site and you'll see it through for years to make sure it succeeds. And if you are saying that to yourself, you've only proving my point now because I've seen your kind before

It boils down to 1 simple thing, if you really love these oldskool games you'd spend your time populating content on a current gamer site, instead of spending your time making a system that others can use to populate content. Do you see the essential problem here?

I would like to say I take my own medicine. Many times I've been tempted to post reviews of CDs and stuff on my blog but the cold truth is, off topic blog content cannot target your audience and will fade away. But a well placed Amazon review will live on forever

But to give you the answer you want, websites don't use "pages", they use web apps, obviously because it's not feasible to change hundreds/thousands of pages. To handle content you use a CMS (Content Management System) but for what you want, I doubt there are any CMSs available so you'll have to do what the majority of people do, write one or have one written for you.

Your choice of language isn't too important but most small time people use a Linux server, PHP and MySQL as it's often the cheapest. But there's nothing wrong with a Windows 2003 server host and ASP.Net as long as you're using a free database as msSQL will cost you a pretty penny.

Honestly considering the question you asked, you're not ready to code this yourself, and without any CMSs that I know of to suite you, you'll have to hire somebody. A project like this I couldn't do for any less than $1,000 and you can expect a similar estimate from other people.

Edited November 15, 2005 by Rhelic